I’ll give the last word to one of my students. The Gleick incident, he said, shows that the “debate” over global warming is not really a debate any more. It’s a war, and when people are waging war, they always lie for their cause.

152 thoughts on “Quote of the week”

Should n’t they be asking when will it be appropriate to stop lying, rather than stop lying?
I thought Kant gave us the categorical imperative, in which no lie is justified.
Ain’t it all about rationalization?

Ooops, correction.
Should n’t they be asking when will it be appropriate to stop lying, rather than start lying?
I thought Kant gave us the categorical imperative, in which no lie is justified.
Ain’t it all about rationalization?

Reason # 1001 that this former subscriber only reads Sci Am free at the library. Sad.
Science News (I subscribe) is pretty bad on AGW but less strident and less overtly agenda political in other areas.

A war? Yes, it is a war. It is a war because the alarmist side has always refused to debate or look at real data. There is hardly any “official” data set left that has not been “adjusted” and even so — they are unwilling to honest debate.
As someone said about a related matter — and yet they still move.

Have there not been lies for years? Homogenized weather records, hide the decline, hide the middle age warming and the roman warming, hide the historical temp. records for New Zealand, hide the rainfall records for Australia,bury temp. records for over 20,000 stations, Antarctic ice sheet measures, etc. The list never stops.

A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.
— Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (1951)

But it isn’t a war. War is the thing where people kill one another. Lying, fraud, and deception are all common in debates. Really, calling it war just maybe be justified on literary grounds, but not to explain motives. His first words were probably more interesting than his last ones.

The truly sad thing here is that Gleick was so misdirected in his efforts that he (in J. Curry’s words) committed professional seppuku for virtually nothing. Heartland would have been happy to explain, as Mr. Bast’s note to Judith Curry shows, everything that Heartland is doing. If Gleick had gone to the meeting and dinner, and provided his soft shoe shuffle as entertainment, he probably would have gotten a lot more information than he did with his bungling and amateurish efforts at identify theft and wire fraud. Heck, he could have met a bunch of donors in person…
The Heartland documents prove that Heartland is doing exactly what it says it is – and on a shoestring budget, compared to its peers in the CAGW industry. If the best big oil can do is throw an occasional $15k at them, I don’t see what the issue is. Heck the EPA is funding Gleick’s pet project out in California to the tune of hundreds of thousands annually.
Also interesting that Gleick is better paid than “big oil-backed” Bast:
Gleick: $152,514
Bast: $145,135.
(And that for an officially shorter work week: check out the respective 990 forms for 2010: here’s the link to PI’s: http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/financial_information/Pacific_Institute_990_tax_10.pdf; we should all alredy have HI’s from Mr. Gleick’s little undercover endeavours…)
Truly, a moronic undertaking. When looking for a picture for the definition of “own goal”, Mr. Gleick has to qualify as a top candidate.

War……. that’s just about right.
We didn’t pick this fight, but now it’s a fight worth having…and winning!
But what are we fighting for?
Honesty. Full Disclosure. Adherence to the fundamentals of The Scientific Method.
Freedom from the soft tyranny of Climatology non-science politics, regulations, and waste.
An end to the obscene funding levels for an unproven non-science hypothesis, certainly.
Most importantly, we fight for the minds of the next generation of questioning and skeptical Citizens.
AGW War: What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing! That’s why it must be defeated.http://youtu.be/01-2pNCZiNk

“They all lie” is simply incorrect. That’s not what happened here.
“They all use nasty tactics” would be a correct description, and is perfectly appropriate in a war.
‘Mr FOIA’ didn’t lie at all. He exposed the other side’s LIES by using improper and possibly illegal tactics.
Gleick lied. He used improper and possibly illegal tactics to expose the other side’s ORDINARY AND HONEST behavior, then realized that he wouldn’t get anywhere by exposing ordinary and honest behavior, so he added a complete lie to make the other side look bad.
When you have truth on your side you don’t have to lie, but you may have to get nasty in order to stay in the game.

Besides this superstitious tabloid, ironically calling itself “Scientific American”, there has been a similar quote in the other German controlled outlet called “Nature”.
I can’t see an analogy with a “war”, when all misconduct and tricks happen only on one side.
But such qutoes are helpful to understand the roles and motivations of these journals in the proliferation of the Hockey Sticks and similar bad science and why they still haven’t removed false papers of this sort from their archives.

From John Horgan at Scientific American who asks:
Should Global-Warming Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause?
He writes:
I’ll give the last word to one of my students. The Gleick incident, he said, shows that the “debate” over global warming is not really a debate any more. It’s a war, and when people are waging war, they always lie for their cause.
==============
1) So, you have a student that you agree with.
2) Your appeal to authority, is said student.
3) You have no conception of science, “lies” do not withstand the rigors of experimentation.
4) “wars” have always been waged in science, the theory that best describes the experimental results generally gets a grudging acknowledgement from the participants, who then retreat to their respective trenches to plan a new assault on the theory.
Get used to it.

Lying is the stock and trade of the faithful not the thoughtful. Chris, Kant did give us that and he based much of his work on the ancient Greeks. The ethics related to lying are clear and unequivocal. It is not permitted. This and other incidents illustrate the both the nonscientific nature of lying and the old political saw, “the end justifies the means”, to which I always add maybe. I have never been able to find any philosophical defense of that statement. Science is an amoral enterprise, the associated ethical writings related to science seem to be quiet clear only the truth is acceptable. False statements and data are simply not permitted.

Yes, it’s the only defence remaining for their deluded cause. They have already fooled themselves so why not everyone else? Of course the consequence is no-one will believe anything they say any more so their strategy is as deluded as their cause.

John Hogan is wrong when he says “…will probably just confirm their suspicions about environmentalists. ” because I am an environmentalists who does not believe in CAGW (or AGW). The so called environmentalists are socialists hiding behind an environmental mask. Just ask one of the founders of Greenpeace.
I believe, with science backing me up, that more CO2 will make for a better planet for all living things.

So, John Horgan states Gleik’s lie was “morally right, but strategically wrong.”
One wonders when Horgan would think it would be strategically right to lie?
Anything for the cause!
Along with Per Strandberg, I used to read that rag.

They have been lying over many years and the only way to cover a lie (like a teenager) is to lie again. A group can lie the odd time and it may not be noticed at first, but when it becomes often and constant, there is no escape. No wonder the public have little/no trust in such a group of charlatans. Even the least complex sciences look like rocket science to these. Misinformation, data changing, personal attacks, cherry picking and avoiding reality, are all part of the continuation of desperation and lack of any scientific substance.
The simple fact that nuclear plants can remove this worry of CO2 completely (even if it existed) in just a few years with all this money being spent on a major building programme, just highlights what a scam it has been. The objection against nuclear plants is not for the concern on global climate, but the concern of the scam ending.

I bid “AMF” to SciAm a while back, after 25 years – for just such attitude. The tone of the article is to justify lies for a noble cause. Alas, neither the lies nor the cause are even remotely noble.
I got a call about a year ago from SciAm “welcoming” me “back into the family” with some discount. I told ’em I wouldn’t be joining their family or any other cult and kindly keep your glossy fish-wrap out of my mailbox.

Robert Burns’ poem “To A Louse” said it best:
“O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us! ”
Mr. John Horgan- you just publicly stated that you believe that it’s acceptable to use fraud and deceit, if necessary to advance your cause..
. When trying to influence others, you resort to telling lies, by your own admission- n’est ce pas?
In other words, nothing you say can be believed.
Your ethos is no different than that ascribed to by every thief and tyrant and liar which the world has ever known and you are teaching such caliginous integrity to others.
For certain, Mr. Horgan, Robert Burns had you in mind -“To A Louse” is all too apropos.

The wise words department.
Nearly four hundred years ago the English fought a bitter civil war which ended up with King Charles losing his head.
The English then decided they did not like the Puritans, the victors, very much either but being a stoic, unimaginative and pragmatic lot the best they could do, once the opportunity served, was to get a new king, Charles 11: on terms.
Nevertheless the intellectual drive that lost a King his head spread around the world and is after all the very foundation of the USA and its constitution. The French revolution, one hundred and fifty years later, which is much celebrated even now, was a pale imitation by comparison. As for Marxism and other puritanical ideas of some ideal government, well they all came to nought in the end.
Not that people are not trying to revive these authoritarian ideas under different names. Greenery and the like.
But the best summary of all about the English civil war was made by an obscure colonel on the royalist, the losing, side.
He observed ‘ We had a war and now it is ended nobody can tell what it was all about ‘
Kindest Regards

You can add Physics Today to the list of apologists. The latest issue contains quotes by the members of the A team about the harassing of the elite members with nasty statements about them. I guess they can dish it out but can’t take the heat. Horgan make one got point. The chasm between warming proponents and denying proponents is widening. Gleich’s dishonest activities was instrumental making chasm deeper. Gleich perpetrated the ultimate form of harassment, identity theft.

Read through the comments over there to be stunned and amazed. If you’ve never wandered into their swamps that is. The arguments made in justification of theft, lies, and plain bad science are horrifying. The mentality is the exact same as we’re seeing with society at large. Lie, subvert the rule of law (or science), and de-humanize the opposition. Bad things lie down that road.

This quote is very sad.
I loved Joe Bast Memo to Dr. Judith Curry. He lays out an honest, aggressive action plan. No lies, no underhanded actions. Instead conferences, publications, personal contacts with decision makers and lots of speaking dates. And they have constantly invited debate.

I have heard much out there lately that what Dr Gleik has done has “hurt the cause of climate science.” Since when has climate science… or any other science for that matter, been a “cause?” Isn’t that a little like saying you’ve hurt the cause of chemistry?
OK… I know it’s pollyannish to think this way, but I do long for the days when science was an investigation, and not a crusade.

“I thought Kant gave us the categorical imperative, in which no lie is justified.”
If Kant said that he was wrong. In My Humble Opinion. 8). (I’ve not read Kant… yet). I’d lie my ass off if someone came to my house with a gun saying he wanted to murder someone and then asked me where they were (Yes Yes I know that’s a rare lifeboat scenario, but at that point when aggression enters the equation, your obligation to ethics is not the same, that’s why violence against an aggressor can be legitimate, but you couldn’t (or shouldn’t) justify aggression against a random person in the street). I really must get round to reading him I’d be fascinated to see his argument for that, if that’s what he said.
There is however the ever present danger of lying to yourself. Which is always the first lie, and the worst one, because then you can justify almost anything. A lesson I hope for Gleick’s sake he is learning now. From his writings there are signs that this may be dawning on him. Good for him, and I hope he uses this opportunity to grow as a person.

No, Mr Horgan. The war is about truth. Our side’s cause itself is truth. Therefore, the means involve truth.
One of the finest statements about truth that I’ve found is that of Albus Dumbledore to Harry, at the end of the first book. The goal, and the spirit of the endeavour, is truth… but sometimes the whole truth cannot be told, and on rare occasions lies may have a place, but only after careful consideration that there is no other way to fight for truth… and of course, “careful consideration” is itself a truth-seeking mission, and an ongoing one.

If I belonged to a group of people that thought the HI was actively plotting and conniving to destroy the world, then lying would be the least of what I would be prepared to do. Would it have been ethical to lie to and practise identity theft against the Nazi’s, who, while nasty, were not actually bent on world destruction? I suggest yes.
The problem is that there are a large group of people with fanatical political beliefs that benefited from a fortunate swing in the climate to push their views, and as the swing reverses, will become rather challenged.

So while the skeptics are looking for the truth, the warmists themselves are bringing up the issue of lying. And who has been caught in the web of lies? The warmists. Now that its in the open, they feel that they have to justify their lying.

Actually, I call to mind a quote of William Donovan (head of the OSS during WWII) that “The first rule of propaganda is: Never tell a lie.” Being found demonstrably false in anything you say negates everything you say. So this “student” has quite a bit more learning to do.

Does any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, that it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of sadness and depression, and unpleasing to themselves? -FB

So John Horgan gives the last word to one of his students who said that the Gleick incident shows that the debate over catastrophic AGW is not a debate…”It’s a war…”
What wonderful insight. How very right John Horgan and his student are. Just not quite in the manner they think.
There’s an old saying that ‘war is the health of the state’. But, in the presence of nuclear weapons which would make a major war unthinkable what does one do? Well, they found the answer: it’s CAGW. Is it any wonder that Al Gore, a former agent of the state, in his book, ‘Earth In The Balance’, calls for nothing less than what is clearly a major wartime style mobilization to counter attack the enemy of CAGW?

Stephen Schneider is famous for giving his blessing to climate alarmists to lie:…to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest…”
They always choose being effective, don’t they?

But it isn’t a war. War is the thing where people kill one another. (…)

Didn’t you read the stuff in the last Newsbytes piece? Electricity prices have gotten so high in Germany that people can’t afford it, there are half a million households in the dark. In winter. Over in the UK, as we heard about last year, energy prices are so high that the impoverished pensioners are burning old books to stay warm, and those are the lucky ones that can afford heat of some sort, as opposed to those who have died from lack of heating.
Then there are the simple economics of the many many billions that have been wasted on the CAGW boondoggle that drained away funds that could have provided clean water and good food and medicine to many millions of needy people throughout the world. Plus those are the people who need reliable cheap energy to survive and perhaps prosper, who are actively dissuaded from pursuing readily available and relatively inexpensive fossil fuel energy as “it would harm the planet!” and are directed to inadequate solar and wind instead, at least when the Greens and other soft-minded people aren’t going on and on about the natural beauty of their “native lifestyle” and insist it needs to preserved, any “improvements” will just corrupt them with “Western influence” and destroy them, etc.
The bodies are there, people are being killed, in a less-noticeable passive manner without obvious smoking guns being held by obvious hands. But if you only consider it a war if people are being killed, then don’t doubt for a minute that this is war.

John Hogan’s student says, “It’s a war, and when people are waging war, they always lie for their cause.”
Like many student observations, this one is naive. The lying began long before there was war, and a case can be made that it is the lies by CAGW advocates that started the war.
John Hogan’s student needs a better teacher.

Yeah, the only problem with the quote is that it makes it sound like the actions are mutual on both sides. No-one is perfect and there are warts on both sides, to be sure. But the disparity is pretty striking.

Brian: “But it isn’t a war. War is the thing where people kill one another. ”
But it is a war. Millions will die depending upon the degree of Green prescriptions inflicted upon society. Millions have already died from just one of them, the banning of DDT. Remember what “sustainable development” really is: the construction of western eco-paradise on the bodies of millions of dead Africans.
Remember that the Greens have already embraced death as part of their pantheon. It’s explicit in Malthusianism.

So it’s a faux war to justify deceptive motivation is it? What hubris !
I think Kennedy explains this and the motivation for AGW as a “social advocacy”cause. .
“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. -John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963)
It’s fear.
Born from an overly secure and priveleged society, this angst infects those who believe that the existence of others will somehow negatively impact them personally.
These angst ridden who need to practice this fear based manipulation, have no faith in themselves nor humanity.
Without faith they feel the need to control us whilst considering themselves elite, more aware and righteous than we the common people.
Yet their actions whist comically tragic and grandiose also reveal their “inferiority” in all respects to those they seek to control.
And isn’t that what fear inherently does , “lessen the man”?
Only the interior are incapable of using reason, logic or right to win their case and a quick examination of their tactics reveals most AGW adherents don’t even believe their own “science”.
Why would they use oxymorons and Orwelian “Newspeak” such as “Carbon pollution” which is simply cheap PR spin and propaganda not science?
Why try to shame dissent by using perjorative terms such as “Denier”?
That is the cheap bulling of the mentally defeated and neither open minded nor is it science.
Then there is the sheer volume of hyperbolic idiocy of the scenarios of destruction and doom culminating in prominent AGW cheerleader James Hansens claiming that the “seas will boil”.
Good leaders and those with natural authority don’t use fear nor panic but calm others. It’s, shysters and carpetbaggers who try to stamped others into action through fear, as do the AGW choir – and their main target is the innocents, they put fear into children and that is abuse.
Then the frauds and deceit – hockey stick, Climategate, data perversion ad nauseum etc etc.
How many AGW adhearents have been outraged by these wrongs verses how many have not only kept the faith but defended these untruths?
And lastly, why this constant, obsequious and demeaning “appeal to authority”?
Is critical thinking so despised and slavish obedience a necessary requirement for the AGW faith ?
As a layman, I certainly don’t need a degree in Climateology to discern fraud.

Would be nice to see the funding of the Pacific Institute of Blah Blah.Even nicer to see the funding of Tides Foundation and related groups. Over a billion dollars of hidden funding for the revolution.Now Tides and it’s network has virtual control of most foundation and government grants on climate and the environment.While fanatically attacking funding for their opponents,the Tides Group can both hide and multiply it’s supporter’s contributions through a complex web of organizations. A research group does a study, an investigative journalist group writes some stories, a law group files a suit,a political group has a law passed, and its just another day at Tides.

There is a Warmist trick of Mr. Horgan: “Talking about ONE lie”….
The truth are Gleicks actions: Trying to get a top chair in childrens education by claiming HIGHEST moral standards on one side (see his chair application), accompanied,
at the same time, by sneaky, lying, outsmarting and deceiving actions concerning an
American Institute….
We have to judge Gleicks parallel actions and whether both are compatible…..
For Mr. Horgan, he is a lost soul ..[how did he get a educational job himself}….
.even Kant literature about moral standards and peace made an impression on him and
won’t help him……he is too infected, read : “Gleick….a hero”….” with only ONE clearly MORAL lie”
and concluding with a students [his?] quote: ” We are in a state of war ….and people [good
or bad? All or only the villains?] always lie…..”
Why don’t we put an amendment into the declaration of human rights: “In case of war….people are entitled to always lie for their cause and abstain from truth…..”…. let’s get Mr. Horgan
to draw up this amendment……
JS

“But another philosopher my students and I are reading, the utilitarian John Stuart Mill, said that judging acts according to intentions is not enough. We also have to look at consequences. And if Gleick’s deception has any consequences, they will probably be harmful. His exposure of the Heartland Institute’s plans, far from convincing skeptics to reconsider their position, will probably just confirm their suspicions about environmentalists. Even if Gleick’s lie was morally right, it was strategically wrong.”
what a bizarre paragraph from Scientific American
Maybe the author is rhetorical musing about how Utilitarians would argue…but, leaves is unclear. So sad

Political Junkie says:
February 24, 2012 at 7:25 pm
Stacey,
“On the Judith Curry update ‘oh the ironing’
A you must be pressed for time”
Smooth!
————————-
….. or maybe he was just … ahem… Board
Ba boom tish
It doesn’t seem quite the same – all having a laugh, despite the court jesters not coming in to amuse us ??

(I’ve not read Kant… yet). … I really must get round to reading him I’d be fascinated to see his argument for that, if that’s what he said.

Be warned; Kant is very heavy going. Kantians frequently have opposing views on what Kant “really meant” and that indicates to me that they couldn’t understand WTF he was saying either. Of course when you invest a significant portion of your life to studying something, you wouldn’t want to admit that you remained in ignorance of what you had studied.

Wow!
I think everybody should take a moment to digest just how completely surreal the fallout from this incident has become……..
Things have been crazy this week, granted! But now Scientific American is giving article space to a commentator proposing (and potentially inciting?) the idea, publicly, that TRUTH is IRRELEVANT in the debate over the extent to which Global Warming is settled science.
Can this really be happening?? Whatever one’s views of Heartland, of Gleick, of the science…can this really be the level that the public discourse has sunk to??? That this sort of reckless, immature proponent of the abandonment of all principle is influencing young minds in a philosophy class really does give rise to fear for the future of education. That a respected journal, supposedly upholding the principles of objective, scientific enquiry, should see fit to publish it is beyond shame. It beggars belief!

Per Strandberg says:
February 24, 2012 at 5:31 pm
> Yeah! I was once a subscriber of Scientific American, many many lies ago.
I didn’t renew when they stopped being Scientific American and tried to compete with the magazines that took away SciAm’s advertising revenue.

“It’s a war, and when people are waging war, they always lie for their cause.”
Too bad that went go to war armed with nothing but blanks and dummies.
Horgan writes:
—-
Kant said that when judging the morality of an act, we must weigh the intentions of the actor. Was he acting selfishly, to benefit himself, or selflessly, to help others? By this criterion, Gleick’s lie was clearly moral, because he was defending a cause that he passionately views as righteous. Gleick, you might say, is a hero comparable to….
—-
Horgan needs some history lessons.
Not the “opinions” of the students sucking up to him.
Horgan’s paradox:
“Is it OK to lie to your professor if he asks when, if ever, is it OK to lie?”

Two nations that have a thriving trade relationship have never gone to war. By analogy, two sides of an issue are at war when either side refuses to:
a) Debate.
b) Open their data and methodology for all to see.
c) Follow legal means of obtaining information.
d) Refrain from lying about the other side.
e) Uses all their resources to destroy the other side.
By the way, none of the above items are characteristic of “science”. ALL the above items, however, are characteristic of “climate science”. Hence, “climate science” is not “science” at all. It is a political war with control of the world’s population at stake.

Political Junkie says:
February 24, 2012 at 8:22 pm
“On the Judith Curry update ‘oh the ironing’
A you must be pressed for time”
Smooth!
————————-
….. or maybe he was just … ahem… Board
_________________
Silly! I have more pressing issues.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Comments like that really get me steamed.

I like this on the Sci. Am. article: “About the Author: Every week, John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science.” So if he seems too tolerant of their students lying for the cause: that’s OK if you’re one of those professionally puckish people.

Wow, so another (once respected) science publication is hoisted on its own petard. Sad to see the continued damage these people (certainly no longer real scientists) are doing to science. I wonder when the rest of the science world will speak up. The world has figured it out but these folks have not yet. Tick tick tick…

“Should Global-Warming Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause?”
——————————————————————————-
That’s all they have.
algore quotes: “We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
“It is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations.”

“On the Judith Curry update ‘oh the ironing’
A you must be pressed for time”
Smooth!
————————-
….. or maybe he was just … ahem… Board
_________________
Silly! I have more pressing issues.
—————————————
Now you’ve got me creasing up with laughter
———————————
That may be in starch contrast as to what was meant.

Gore and Schneider don’t (or in Schneider’s case, didn’t) have a problem with lying to promote the cause; in fact they openly admitted to that.
Gleick at least recognised that lying was wrong, and attempted to apologise, even though he did so while still shooting at his opponents.

If it is a war, then so be it.
The global warming industry is like Iran’s nuclear weapons development program: something fundamentally wrong, very expensive, not needed and surrounded in a web of lies, but which needs to be dismantled immediately.

But it isn’t a war. War is the thing where people kill one another. Lying, fraud, and deception are all common in debates. Really, calling it war just maybe be justified on literary grounds, but not to explain motives. His first words were probably more interesting than his last ones.

I respectfully disagree. You haven’t considered the thousands of people around the world who have starved to death or died of disease because of the $Billions that have been (mis)spent trying to persuade them their problems are caused by CO2.
How much sense does that make? Well, absolutely none.
Tell someone who has lost a child or brother or sister that they died so we can all feel a little bit better about CO2. Precious little.
It simply boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
So yes, it is a war where people kill one another. And the (preventable) deaths of thousands of children from hunger or disease is the absolute worst war there is. Nothing else comes even close.

You’re over thinking. The professor quotes a student who made a correct observation. It really doesn’t need (or support) a lot of analysis.
Sometimes the truth is really simple and just shines through. (ie. Partisans lie.) Leave the convoluted logic to the warmists. People can recognize fertilizer by its smell.

“Peter Gleick, a global-warming researcher and environmental activist,” –John Horgan
“A researcher is somebody who performs research, the search for knowledge or in general any systematic investigation to establish facts.” –Wikipedia
“one who is aggressively active on behalf of a cause.” –Webster
So, a global-warming researcher and environmental activist would be someone who performs research on behalf of the global-warming cause?

The really, really shocking thing to me, the post-modern (or “post-normal”) thing, if you will, is the ease with which some activist scientists and professionial journalists, many from highly respected newspapers and academic journals, are sliding seamlessly into the concept of a strategic propaganda “war”. There seems to be an unprecedented, (to science reporting at any rate) cynical and premeditated rationalising away of the need for absolute integrity – and surely many of these intellgent disseminators of “information” to the public realise the shaky moral ground they are treading!
A naively well-intentioned, but nevertheless determined and chilling, campaign to foist a bastardised ethics of “relativity” onto the public discourse has crept into the output of numerous mainstream newspaper publishers, broadcasters and scientific institutions. The rationale, as in actual war, seems to be the usual, “we dare not trust the dumb, sedentary public to see sense”, therefore we must fight (real or imagined) fire with fire. The result: lying, deception, economy of truth, denial that there is real debate, are all necessary to do what must be done!
One of the many ironies of this whole affair is that the Heartland Institute is basically unknown on this, the European (yes, I am up early!), side of the pond. Apart from doubts thrown up by the odd winter cold snap, all UK mainstream media, for example, stay decidedly on-message about Global Warming. The fact that, in the face of this, the likes of Suzanne Goldenberg at the Guardian and Richard Black at the BBC insist on spinning dubious articles portraying the Gleick affair as a heroic/tragic tilting of the lance at some demonic, world-threatening institution is simply bizarre. It smacks of a dishonest desperation that the handily sewn-up mainstream message not be allowed to drift in the public consciousness by a single percentile.
I speak, by the way, as one who has no love for lobbyists, especially right-wing lobbyists, but as someone who is aghast at the erosion of informed, honest reporting and the creeping contamination of advocacy journalism and activist science. That a lobbying organisation (of questionable influence) may put a slant on their side of the debate, is and always will be problematic in the corriders of power (though hardly new or surprising), that supposedly ethical journalists and scientists see this as a call to arms and feel a duty to slant the facts in a contrary direction in the name of realpolitik, is a road to ruin.

In the embeded photo on John Horgan’s Scientific American referenced article there appears to be a cooling tower spewing a dark cloud. Lighting effects make it appear really nasty. It this is in fact a cooling tower that cloud would be only water vapor. If that is the case would this be a subtle form of perhaps ‘fibbing’ to imply a source of pollution. Not directly stated but suggestive to the uninformed. Maybe it could answer his own question. Would that answer be that any form of deception to any degree is OK in his view?
How about it Horgan, I’ll await your response. I’m sure you are aware of this thread but I doubt you will respond.

peter_ga says:February 24, 2012 at 6:44 pm
” Would it have been ethical to lie to and practise (sic) identity theft against the Nazis…?”
*******
The World At War documentary contains an interview of a German woman, an anti-Nazi Adventist, describing having to lie to the Gestapo in order to save her neighbor from arrest. She recounts complaining to her husband that she felt bad for having lied. Her husband responded that dictatorships turn everyone into liars.
The Soviets collapsed under the weight of the lies that grew so blatant they could not be ignored.
William Shakespeare had human nature pegged all those centuries ago: “Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

Scientific American outed itself from the scientific method long ago, in its despicable treatment of Bjorn Lomborg. Much like the current AGW cult, it stationed itself above mere truth, scientific inquiry and open debate, and banished Lomborg from its pages to prevent his replies to the intellectual assassains whose slanders of him SA had invited.
The carbon footprint arising from the efforts of earning money for a subscription to SA should give the editors pause, to consider what their mission on this earth really is.

All is being smothered in far too many words.
Lies equate to rot.
Rot must be totally eradicated (cut out and burned) if all is not to be destroyed.
I think it is far too late already. The planet has been soundly trashed.
Geoff Alder

Insufficiently Sensitive says:
February 24, 2012 at 11:19 pm
“Scientific American outed itself from the scientific method long ago, in its despicable treatment of Bjorn Lomborg.”
That is correct! I would NEVER buy S.American.

Ok, they’re going into the trap. Horgan says, it’s OK to lie when you believe in The Cause, the Grauniad says Gleick’s a hero, Horgan says it’s a war and people lie in wars (and do all sorts of other nasty things, like blowing up stuff).
We might expect more sneaky attacks, phishing and lies from would-be heroes. BUT the good thing is: They will lose more of their credibility each time.
“Wait in your front door and you´ll see the corpses of your enemies passing by” (chinese proverb).

RockyRoad says:
February 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm
“I respectfully disagree. You haven’t considered the thousands of people around the world who have starved to death or died of disease because of the $Billions that have been (mis)spent trying to persuade them their problems are caused by CO2.”
That is exactly right, and that is exactly the point Lomborg (a warmist) was making since the Skeptical Environmentalist, arguing that more life years can be saved for the same amount of money with about anything remotely useful but by fighting CO2. Making him about the only warmist I know capable of logical thought, empathy and realism. Doesn’t mean there aren’t others but I don’t know them. And THAT got him in hot water with Pachauri, SciAm etc., imagine that. All he was arguing for was a different allocation of resources.
So, they treated him exactly the same way they treat any total non-believer in warming or people who even deny the existence of a greenhouse effect.
Somehow, the IPCC warmists are completely uncapable of rational debate even when a person like Lomborg only slightly deviates from their bloc opinion.
OR, another possible conclusion would be: By arguing for a different allocation of resources, Lomborg touched on the TRUE core of the IPCC warmism, which is NOT about CO2 or the climate but about power and money, and how to redistribute it.
And THAT leads to the conclusion that Gleick misunderstood his own movement. He had this nice cosy enviable EPA-funded existence in beautiful California and all he would have to do would be droning on on Twitter and Forbes and youtube ’til Kingdom come and he would have lived happily ever after… his problem was that he believed the lie of his own movement – that it’s about CO2; don’t they clue their own people in? Don’t they have initiation rites or something?

That Horgan feels it is even acceptable to raise the question shows how far science (or conceptions of it) have fallen.
Both Mill and Kant would have been horrified at what Horgan is proposing. He should have gone with Plato instead as he may have entertained the question, being the first to propose the acceptability of the Noble Lie.
Also, what business has this person in teaching philosophy – especially when he is so obviously leading his students to certain politically correct answers (and mauling Mill and Kant in the process).

I never thought that many of the highly educated and intelligent scientists pushing the AGW mantra actually believe in it. It’s like being member of communist party in a Stalinist regime, you know it’s wrong, but you dare not leave and ‘betray’ the cause. Once regime falls they all switch loyalties overnight and ‘en masse’. Just look at the east Europe’s ex-communist states, and who is in power now, the same old lot, just wearing different insignia.

If this war is a war it is not about data and science but about the hearts and minds of an electorate. The two sides have polarised and acquired followers, the bulk of these followers see only the science presented by their side and don’t really understand it anyway. It now appears to be a war of attrition, so it will continue until one side runs out of either soldiers or some vital raw material. The soldiers are measured by the opinion polls. The raw materials are political power, funding, access to the blogosphere, clever articulate men and the weather. I don’t think access to the learned journals and scientific opinion really comes in to it.

Anthony: This confirms how correct you were to take the high-ground and do the right thing with the private information you obtained with the CG2 files (update 38) – and now that’s a double blow to the warmists as some of them feel it’s acceptable to lie in the cause of political advocacy.
By the way (rhetorical question); did you tell your family you were expecting 2012 to be a “quiet” year?

polistra says:
February 24, 2012 at 5:35 pm
“They all lie” is simply incorrect. That’s not what happened here.
“They all use nasty tactics” would be a correct description, and is perfectly appropriate in a war.
‘Mr FOIA’ didn’t lie at all. He exposed the other side’s LIES by using improper and possibly illegal tactics.
You are perfectly right. The difference is not so subtle not to be easy understood and clear for anybody rational who wants to look at.
Mike says:
February 24, 2012 at 6:07 pm
“I have heard much out there lately that what Dr Gleik has done has “hurt the cause of climate science.” Since when has climate science… or any other science for that matter, been a “cause?” Isn’t that a little like saying you’ve hurt the cause of chemistry?”
You are right to point this out. It is lying through omission – actually a typical propaganda action. It may hurt CAGW theory support but CAGW is not “climate science” but a theory inside of it.
The same is valid for other such distortions of the english language “skeptics being against climate change” or “denying climate change” – nonsense wording. One gets packaged under “climate change” the whole CAGW theory and only the theory and should not buy it.

The same piece also asks some questions John Horgan thinks are difficult:
Let me answer them for him.
“Shouldn’t you lie if your girlfriend asks you if you like her new haircut?”
Answer: No you should speak the honest truth if you don’t like her new haircut. If she can’t respect your opinion she is not worth to be with. She doesn’t have to change her haircut. It’s her life. You have to respect that as well. Love is more than just a haircut.
“If your boss, who’s a vindictive bastard, asks your opinion of his new business plan?”
Answer: Tell him the truth. Remember this one: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/24/friday-funny-an-inconvenient-lesson-from-60-years-ago/ (point 4)
“What about lying in order to reveal a plot that you believe imperils all of humanity?”
Answer: That’s a very difficult one. Only if there is sufficient prove and in the case of CAGW there is still not enough evidence around. The observations still point to a mild warming by a doubling of CO2.
Let me ask John Horgan one question in return:
– Should you get delusional in your plans to try to save the planet?

Mike says:
February 24, 2012 at 6:07 pm
“I have heard much out there lately that what Dr Gleik has done has “hurt the cause of climate “science.” Since when has climate science… or any other science for that matter, been a “cause?” Isn’t that a little like saying you’ve hurt the cause of chemistry?”
You don’t provide a source; which person said that? I don’t remember anyone saying Gleick had hurt “the cause of climate science.” A lot of people including me might have said, he has hurt his own cause, he has hurt the alarmist’s cause… that is not the same thing.
We don’t think in such strange, wrong, ill-defined categories. I categorically refuse your fuzzy accusation.

Robert of Ottawa says February 25, 2012 at 4:52 am: “The whole alarmist crimatology was founded and developed with the intent to prove AGW, rather than investigate climate.”
Indeed.
The IPCC is in business for one and only one reason: to bolster the case for Disastrous Anthopogenic Global Warming (DAGW), and how (and how much) to “fix” it.
The third paragraph of the IPCC charter dated 6 December 1988 states: “Noting with concern that the emerging evidence that the continued growth in atmospheric concentrations of “greenhouse” gases could produce global warming with an eventual rise in sea levels, the effects of which could be disastrous for mankind if timely steps are not taken at all levels.”
The IPCC charter: http://www.ipcc.ch/docs/UNGA43-53.pdf

I had posted this in the main Gleick thread, but it seems even more appropriate in relation to this story and the current SciAm staff:
To be a good leftist, you have to believe in these definitions:
GOOD: = anything that I do, or want to do, or that my friends do. Because we are GOOD people, and GOOD people can do no wrong.
EVIL: = anything that my enemies do, or want to do, or that their friends do. Because they are EVIL!!! and everything they do is EVIL!!!
1st corollary: Because my enemies are EVIL anything I do against them, no matter what it is, is automatically GOOD!!!
2nd corollary: Laws are only meant to apply to EVIL people, since I am GOOD they never apply to me or my friends!
If you understand how deeply they believe these rules, the rest of their actions and beliefs become incredibly transparent.

In recall my ethics class in college, where we discussed hypothetical situations such as hiding Anne Frank’s family in the attic. If the Nazi’s came to search your house, is it permissible to lie and tell them no one is in the attic?
Many if not most people would agree that is an acceptable lie. If you’re truly convinced you’re preventing a greater evil, then exaggeration, fraud and outright lies are acceptable.
Remember, these people are zealots. They hold irrational beliefs about fossil fuels, “Big Oil” and the climate. They see shadow conspiracies where none exist. They are delusionally fighting non-existent boogeyman. They are convinced they know the truth and that those who disagree aren’t just wrong, but evil.
I’m surprised we haven’t found more Peter Gleick’s out there.

TomB says:
February 24, 2012 at 6:50 pm
On the other hand, a major part of espionage is feeding false information to the enemy.
The British invented an entire, fictional, army, just to convince them that the invasion was going to happen at the Port de Calaise (sp?) instead of Normandy.
The fact that the German’s bought the rouse saved thousands of Allied lives, and may have been the reason why the invasion was eventually successful.

John Horgan: Director of Science Writings
Since Horgan teaches his student’s that there are times when lying is OK, I presume it’s OK with him if a student of his lies, plagiarises, cribs, whatever to get a better grade. It’s OK, because flunking out has catastrophic consequences.
Or is it just the usual liberal view that you can lie to anyone if it agrees with my point of view.
I’m so glad he’s teaching science.

“the “debate” over global warming is not really a debate any more. It’s a war ..”
Who ended the debate and turned it into a war? When you insult your opponents as “deniers” and claim the “science is settled”, it sounds like you are trying to stifle debate.

“But it isn’t a war. War is the thing where people kill one another. ”
This became a war when the UN banned DDT, after the publishing of “Silent Spring,” which lead to the deaths of millions in the Third World to malaria.

The “Climate Wars” may be the first Internet “World War”.
It is asymmetric in that the warmista has a very full war chest. They have the science journals and much of the Main Stream Media on their side. They have hundreds of millions of dollars being shoveled their way by grateful governments. The warmista has even been able to infect the information chain running through schools and universities.
They have all this and yet small enterprises like Heartland and WUWT still shake their world and make converts everywhere the Interweb reaches. We are outgunned and outfunded and yet we still cause consternation and our message is more accepted than the “we are all doomed” message.
The sea is not behaving abnormally, the tropical tropospheric hot spots haven’t happened and the temperature models have failed to predict what is happening.
So they, the warmista, are forced to lie, cheat and steal to keep their rubbish religion alive. They have had to politicize the whole debate because thinking people understand the science and so the appeal is now to left/liberal thinking. The fact that SA is justifying deceit is astonishing by itself but let’s all understand that this really is the end of there being no science debate. There is and we need to keep on pushing it home.
No accelerated sea level rise. No tropical hotspots. The CO2 theory is as dead as Julius Caesar. Fools like Gliek have at least seen that fact. Smarter fools may never get there but their relevance is fast vanishing.

I would like to thank the Moderators, Anthony Watts, Guest Writers, and the many contributors to this blog for their efforts to keep the discussion civil and truthful.
Fortunately there is the internet, free speech, and a number of courageous scientists who continue the pursuit of the truth and process of science. The essence of science is the pursuit of the truth.
The IPCC and associated climategates (plural not singular), are destined to become the largest scientific scandal of all time.
John Horgan are the following examples acceptable science? Does the new chairman of ethics for the AGU have any comment concerning the ethics of what appears to be data manipulation to support an agenda? Are there any extreme AGW paradigm followers that could respond to these questions?
“Lying is done with words and also with silence.” Adrienne Rich
Seagatehttp://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2011/Winter-2010/Morner.pdf
The mean of all the 159 NOAA sites gives a rate of 0.5 mm/year to 0.6 mm/year (Burton 2010). A better approach, however, is to exclude those sites that represent uplifted and subsided areas (Figure 4). This leaves 68 sites of reasonable stability (still with the possibility of an exaggeration of the rate of change, as discussed above). These sites give a present rate of sea level rise in the order of 1.0 (± 1.0) mm/year. This is far below the rates given by satellite altimetry, and the smell of a “sea-levelgate” gets stronger.
When the satellite altimetry group realized that the 1997 rise was an ENSO signal, and they extended the trend up to 2003, they seemed to have faced a problem: There was no sea level rise visible, and therefore a “reinterpretation” needed to be undertaken. (This was orally confirmed at the Global Warming meeting held by the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow in 2005, which I attended). Exactly what was done remains unclear, as the satellite altimetry groups do not specify the additional “corrections” they now infer. In 2003, the satellite altimetry record (Aviso 2003) suddenly took a new tilt—away from the quite horizontal record of 1992-2000, seen in Figures 5 and 6—of 2.3 (±0.1) mm/year (Figure 7).
As reported above regarding such adjustments, an IPCC member told me that “We had to do so, otherwise it would not be any trend,” and this seems exactly to be the case. This means that we are facing a very grave, if not to say, unethical, “sea-level-gate.” Therefore, the actual “instrumental record” of satellite altimetry (Figure 10) gives a sea level rise around 0.0 mm/year. This fits the observational facts much better, and we seem to reach a coherent
picture of no, or, at most, a minor (in the order of 0.5 mm/yr), sea level rise over the last 50 years.http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/PastRecords.pdf
“Estimating future sea level changes from past records” by Nils-Axel Mörner
“In the last 5000 years, global mean sea level has been dominated by the redistribution of water masses over the globe. In the last 300 years, sea level has been oscillation close to the present with peak rates in the period 1890–1930. Between 1930 and 1950, sea fell. The late 20th century lack any sign of acceleration. Satellite altimetry indicates virtually no changes in the last decade. Therefore, observationally based predictions of future sea level in the year 2100 will give a value of + 10 +/- 10 cm (or +5 +/- 5 cm), by this discarding model outputs by IPCC as well as global loading models. This implies that there is no fear of any massive future flooding as claimed in most global warming scenarios.”
Hurricane Gatehttp://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
“After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns….
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe…..
..The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record…Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).”
I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth’s actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.”

A few years ago, one of my brothers gave me a SciAm subscription as an Xmas gift. I was grateful — but hadn’t been reading it for about a decade and was shocked at its deterioration. That 12 mo worth of issues (~2008) is stacked mostly unread and in some cases not even looked at now; I’ve been “intending” to scan them someday for something worthwhile. Perhaps in my dotage to help recall the bad old days.
As for the war of lies: speak for yourself(selves).

Sure, you can lie in war.
Propaganda, misdirection, deception, are tactics used to defeat an enemy.
However, the only reason there is a war, is that the whole thing is based on propaganda, deceptions and misdirections.
If there were solid science behind the AGW position and it were truly “settled”, no war would be necessary.
Since there is none, the time os ripe to retire the frauds of climate science and start fresh with some honest people who want to know the truth and are not gung ho advocates of what is essentially a a bankrupt political position.

Yes, politicians lie and we tell little white lies to our friends and faimilies. However, the whole premise of the scientific method depends on telling the truth about your findings, and not just the truth, no dissembling is allowed either. Whatever happened to the days when scientists understood that, even if their premise was proven wrong, it was still a contribution to science, perhaps just in showing that that path they took was the wrong one. Maybe this has changed because their is no money or recognition in that. Also, the current state of climate science certainly shows how prescient was Eisenhower’s valedictory speech.

Regarding lying: when I was a lad more than half a century ago, the parish priest challenged us catechism students to name the worst sin we could imagine. My mind raced, and I thought up some devilishly bad sins, even though I was a neophyte in this world (I could certainly do much better today).
But the good father stunned us all when he said, “To tell a lie is the worst sin” — meaning deviation from or denial of the Truth is the most grievous sin that exists. I have pondered that proposition ever since.
Henry James Jr., American author and philosopher, wrote:The worst infidelity is the fear that the Truth will be bad.
What he meant was that we must have faith in the Truth, no matter how scary it might seem at first inspection. And to lie, to deliberately discard the truth for whatever motive, is the most unfaithful act imaginable.

….this concerns lying to the faithfull and good people, but you may lie
to the devil…..to the infidels….to the anti-Christ….to the blasphemists….
…but not to the Skeptics, we are the faithful good people and we have the
truth on our side…..whereas the alarmistic CAGWs are the bad guys…..
and deserve to be chastized….

In reading the article it is clear that Heartland is right to bring a lawsuit. Gliecks actions have caused permanent damage to Heartland. Horgan has bought and promoted the lie that Glieck started. And I’m sure global warmers will never stop promoting the lie. Peter Glieck must make restoration—if such a such a restoration equal to the damage done is possible. And I don’t think it is.

Remember, these people are zealots. They hold irrational beliefs about fossil fuels, “Big Oil” and the climate. They see shadow conspiracies where none exist. They are delusionally fighting non-existent boogeyman. They are convinced they know the truth and that those who disagree aren’t just wrong, but evil.
It is war – a religious war. The warmist church/cult is complete with dogma, a priesthood (climate scientists, Al Gore), devoted acolytes (the MSM, journalists, IPCC, Gleick) and faithful followers (Hollywood celebrities, Greenpeace members, etc.). All discussion is couched in terms of “belief” and “denial”. Any disagreement is met with fierce resistance by the acolytes and followers because of its threat to their core belief system and by the priesthood because of its threat to their money and their power. And most of these people wouldn’t be caught dead praying to an “imaginary friend in the sky” because they’re just too smart for that.

DirkH says:
February 25, 2012 at 5:16 am
Mike says:
February 24, 2012 at 6:07 pm
“I have heard much out there lately that what Dr Gleik has done has “hurt the cause of climate “science.” Since when has climate science… or any other science for that matter, been a “cause?” Isn’t that a little like saying you’ve hurt the cause of chemistry?”
You don’t provide a source; which person said that? I don’t remember anyone saying Gleick had hurt “the cause of climate science.” A lot of people including me might have said, he has hurt his own cause, he has hurt the alarmist’s cause… that is not the same thing.
We don’t think in such strange, wrong, ill-defined categories. I categorically refuse your fuzzy accusation.
Gee DirkH… I guess that since the title of Horgan’s column was “Should Global Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause?”, I didn’t really need to quote a source. But even beyond that…. the word “cause” keeps popping up all over. Do a search on the climategate e-mails and how often the words “the cause” is used by the Climate Science community. Just one example: Michael Mann “I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s doing, but its not helping the cause.”
If you want more specific quotes and sources, I’d be glad to oblige:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/why-peter-gleicks-sting-of-the-heartland-institute-hurts-the-climate-change-cause/2012/02/21/gIQAqqGkRR_blog.html
From The Guardian column by Suzanne Goldenburg: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/gleick-apology-heartland-leak-ethics-debate
“What Peter Gleick did was unethical. He acknowledges that from a point of view of professional ethics there is no defending those actions,” said Dale Jamieson, an expert on ethics who heads the environmental studies programme at New York University. “But relative to what has been going on on the climate denial side this is a fairly small breach of ethics.”
He also rejected the suggestion that Gleick’s wrongdoing could hurt the cause of climate change, or undermine the credibility of scientists
The use of the term comes from both climate scientists and those who write about it… at least from those who are sympathetic to the CAGW side.
I could go on…

for joachim seifert: not sure what point you were trying to make, but given your reference to the “devil … infidels… the antichrist… the blasphemists” I assume it was something pseudo-theological.
SINCE your point was theological, allow me to point out that Christianity has *never* condoned lying, even to ones enemies. (I am told that the koran does, but I don’t know that for sure) In Ephesians 6:14, Paul mentions the metaphorical armor a Christian must have and the first item is the “belt of Truth”. The point is that the Truth is not just a moral value, it is one of the most powerful weapons at ones disposal. To abandon the Truth is to abandon some of your best armor. (a timeless lesson Gleick just found out the hard way)
In Proverbs, one of the books revered by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam we find:
“Let not mercy and truth forsake you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, and so find favor and high esteem in the sight of God and man.” Proverbs 3:3-4
and for good measure I’ll throw in a new testament endorsement of the scientific method:
“Test all things; hold fast what is good.” 1 Thessalonians 5:21
In terms of the ethical question of lying to save Anne Frank, I don’t think even in that instance lying is “justified”, meaning it should be considered faultless; BUT… there are times in life when all the choices in a certain situation are bad. If you are hiding Anne Frank, you have to choose between the evil of lying to civil authorities (no direct harmful result) or the evil of subjecting her to an unjust imprisonment and eventual death. (direct harmful result, with the point that this would be a perversion of justice) The person given that choice must literally choose the lesser of two evils. Lying is not “justified” in this instance, but it is still the most moral choice because every other choice is more unjust and worse in its immediate effects.
How does this apply to Gleick’s case? There were MANY other choices available, no matter how deeply he believed, as others show with their actions every day. Even if he believes that catastrophe will result from the skeptics beliefs, it was still ridiculous to say that lying and stealing were the ONLY options left open to him in this situation. That’s why the Anne Frank comparison is false.
Lying may be necessary as a true last resort – but “last resort” NEVER means “I’m annoyed by these people and sick of trying to do things the hard way.”

eyesonu says:
February 24, 2012 at 9:30 pm
“On the Judith Curry update ‘oh the ironing’
A you must be pressed for time”
Smooth!
————————-
….. or maybe he was just … ahem… Board
_________________
Silly! I have more pressing issues.
—————————————
Now you’ve got me creasing up with laughter
———————————
That may be in starch contrast as to what was meant.
___________________________________
Attempts to smooth it over create yet another wrinkle? Time to hang it up…..

I think the problem is the same thing it always is when it comes to government funding: the people receiving the taxpayer’s money don’t want to lose it. They don’t want to do the hard work of making an honest living. It’s all about money. The people who control the government funds are enriching themselves and their cronies at the expense of everybody else. They’ll do just about anything to stay on the government gravy train, and skeptics threaten that gravy train. Therefore they target skeptics.

RockyRoad says:
February 24, 2012 at 8:44 pm
“Two nations that have a thriving trade relationship have never gone to war. By analogy, two sides of an issue are at war when either side refuses to:
a) Debate.
b) Open their data and methodology for all to see.
c) Follow legal means of obtaining information.
d) Refrain from lying about the other side.
e) Uses all their resources to destroy the other side.
By the way, none of the above items are characteristic of “science”. ALL the above items, however, are characteristic of “climate science”. Hence, “climate science” is not “science” at all. It is a political war with control of the world’s population at stake.”
Ain’t that the truth?

“On the Judith Curry update ‘oh the ironing’
A you must be pressed for time”
Smooth!
————————-
….. or maybe he was just … ahem… Board
_________________
Silly! I have more pressing issues.
—————————————
Now you’ve got me creasing up with laughter
———————————
“Comments like that really get me steamed.”
—————————————-
That may be in starch contrast as to what was meant.
___________________________________
Attempts to smooth it over create yet another wrinkle? Time to hang it up…..
————————————
That really scorches my panties.
=========================
Let me set the record straight. Now I have aired my dirty laundry.

Mike says:
February 25, 2012 at 11:41 am
“Gee DirkH… I guess that since the title of Horgan’s column was “Should Global Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause?”, I didn’t really need to quote a source.”
Oh. You mean THEM. Sorry.

“You don’t provide a source; which person said that? I don’t remember anyone saying Gleick had hurt “the cause of climate science.” A lot of people including me might have said, he has hurt his own cause, he has hurt the alarmist’s cause… that is not the same thing”
Try here:-
“Strong words, and true ones too, but Gleick himself has failed to live up to them — and his actions have hurt not just his own professional reputation but the cause of climate science as well.”http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2107364,00.html

“Two nations that have a thriving trade relationship have never gone to war.”
Germany and France had a thriving trade relationship in 1914. In fact there was a famous book, “The Great Illusion”, written in 1909 which argued that a general European war was now impossible because the European economies were all so intertwined. Since they would all lose, nobody would possibly start something this suicidal.
Well, at least he was right about a general European war being suicidal for everyone.

Technocally military deception operations isn’t lieing. Its much harder than that! The IPCC/ hockey team have repeatedly been out classed by the likes of the climategate email leaker who has covered him self so well we still don’t know who it is or the person who switched sides while they were making the british “No Pressure” ads. Those were master pieces but that’s about it. Except for a few people that got easy video of climate fanatics saying stupid things at various conferences; It really isn’t our style to play the game. We dont need to. We’re winning with the truth on our side. You really don’t need to deceive an idiot.

I think we truly have reached the point Eisenhower was warning us about. Government grants are a stand-in for intellectual curiosity. As a side effect, moral fortitude goes by the wayside. Who cares if it is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do? It’s all relative, and we need that grant money. Indeed, intellectual curiosity is no longer applied to research, but instead is applied to rationalizing actions.

“On the Judith Curry update ‘oh the ironing’
A you must be pressed for time”
Smooth!
————————-
….. or maybe he was just … ahem… Board
_________________
Silly! I have more pressing issues.
—————————————
Now you’ve got me creasing up with laughter
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“Comments like that really get me steamed.”
—————————————-
That may be in starch contrast as to what was meant.
___________________________________
Attempts to smooth it over create yet another wrinkle? Time to hang it up…..
————————————
That really scorches my panties.
_____________________
Let me set the record straight. Now I have aired my dirty laundry.
=====================
I boast about being good with one liners, but the irony is that I’m going to have to fold on this one.

It was in the 70’s when I quit reading Scientific American, before realizing its liberal bent was popular, so I beat some of you guys by a few decades, but I went on to live my life. Zip to the late 2000’s when the price of gas went sky high I joined in the minimalization of using energy. When the climategate emails burst into the open~ Katy bar the door I have bought er obtained some kickass Cars that have lots of horsepower and no regrets er regards to global warming uh global change urgg global whatever. Natural asperation is best. So put that in your hamper just use some fabreeze please.

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